Force must evolve this season

[wholetruth]

Some interesting words here from Mr Foley

Nick Taylor
The West Australian

The 2015 Super Rugby season, the Western Force's 10th anniversary year, looms as a huge tactical challenge for the resurgent club and coach Michael Foley.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/...e-this-season/

[GIGS20]

How good is it to hear that they aren't sitting back resting on their laurels.

I do admire that Foles doesn't shy away from saying the stuff that everybody already knows. Too few coaches admit that they know where the gaps are and how much they need to be fixed....even though it is obvious for the most part.

[Alison]

I think the 3-week break last season broke our momentum. Maybe we'll go better this year without one.

[onions]

If I was an opposing coach looking to beat the Force I'd instruct my team to send most of my attack down Junior's channel

[GIGS20]

If I was an opposing coach looking to beat the Force I'd instruct my team to send most of my attack down Junior's channel

Yeah I'mnot sure that's going to work for much longer.

Junior always struck me as a confidence player who was short on confidence. Certainly his attack improved in leaps and bounds once he realised he could run straight and hard without getting killed....unfortunately then he got injured and went back into his shell a bit.

The trials (yeah I know, you can't take much from a trial) made it look like he was really working hard in both attack and defense....the mixture wasnt quite there yet, but I don't think it's as a result of a lack of effort.

Perhaps the theory behind swapping him and Kyle was to have him doing more of the inside defense, where he's dealing a lot more with little blokes running at him... putting Kyle on the outside to diffuse anything that gets out there as a result. It might seem counterintuitive to put a defensive liability at 12, but with a backrow like we have helping him out on one side and Kyle helping him out on the other (Badger as well when the play is on the right side of the park) it might work rather nicely.........it might also open up gaping holes in the middle of our line and blow up in our faces.

I'm going to go with glass half full until after the Tahs game OK?

[shasta]

It might seem counterintuitive to put a defensive liability at 12,

Not always. 13 is the hardest midfield channel to defend, for a few reasons, so it does make some sense. Better than trying the 15 - 10 swap. That never seems too successful as the 15 has to be a good talker on attack and D. The constant re-alignment detracts too much from that. As long as they execute their roles within the system well, the strategy can be used to throw some nice variations on attack too. We saw a little of that from those two last year. Hopefully they both stay sound and the combo develops further because Godwin has plenty to offer from "Second Five".

[GIGS20]

Yeah, pretty much what I was getting at Shas.